British Asian Ukip leader quits over 'racist populism'

Ukip 'rising star' says party is 'exploiting the stupidity of ignorant anti-immigrant voters'

LAST UPDATED AT 10:16 ON Wed 14 May 2014

A PROMINENT British Asian youth leader has announced that she is leaving Ukip because it has begun peddling a "form of racist populism".

Sanya-Jeet Thandi, who acted as chair of Ukip's London youth wing, says in an article in The Guardian that she is leaving the party due to the "terrifying" direction it has taken and she can no longer support it.

The departure of the 20-year-old is "awkward" for Nigel Farage, the Financial Times says, coming just a week after the party held a political rally featuring ethnic minority council candidates.

In the run up to the European elections Ukip has attempted to counter allegations that it is a racist political party.

But in her article, Thandi says that the party has become just that, and had veered away from the principles that first attracted her to it, which included lower taxes, a smaller state and "an immigration policy that offered fair and equal opportunities for everyone".

"The direction in which the party is going is terrifying," she claims. "Ukip has descended into a form of racist populism that I cannot bring myself to vote for. This week I decided to leave the party and I will abstain from voting in the upcoming European elections. I urge other Ukip supporters to do the same."

The former Ukip member says she has been particularly troubled by a Ukip election poster featuring an image of a finger pointing out at the viewer with the caption, "26m people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?"

Thandi says: "The... poster epitomises where the party is going wrong. This anti-immigrant campaign undermines Ukip's claim not to be a racist party. They are turning the election into a game of 'us' and 'them'. Well, I am with 'them'.

"Ukip is exploiting the stupidity of ignorant anti-immigrant voters for electoral gain. While the party deliberately attracts the racist vote, I refuse to be associated with them," Thandi writes.

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Submitted by ian.edwards@skinnylegs.me.uk on May 14, 2014 - 12:11pm.

The fact is that mass immigration this last 20 odd years has dropped UK wage rates and put people on already low wages onto social security or worse. Poverty is on the rise in the UK for all but the higher echelons. We all know this.

UK government has no power to alter government policy on immigration even if it wanted to because it has given sovereignty away to Brussels. People on low wages and UKIP get this. And increasingly the middle classes are getting it too.

If facts like this are 'populist' then so be it. UKIP is under immense pressure to win elections for its supporters and the 'big three' do all the dirty political tricks in the book to stop them. If UKIP 'milk' some aspects of their policy to gain advantage good for them. Sanya-Jeet is young and inexperienced.

We will never resolve the growing levels of poverty in the UK by uncontrolled mass immigration - which the big three parties have ideologically bought into. Sanya-Jeet come back to UKIP.

Submitted by Veritas_Vincit101 on May 14, 2014 - 12:21pm.

Was it not David Cameron who said the party was a cocktail of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". Why is it that UKIP seems to be attracting a lion's share of these closet types and lately the out and proud types of racists?

Submitted by Chris Sellers on May 14, 2014 - 8:04pm.

...if this lady had actually paid attention to Nigel Farage's recent pronouncements, she would have picked up the fact that he was lamenting the unduly favourable treatment given to EU citizens wishing to come to this country to find work, when compared to those of the Commonwealth, including India and Pakistan.

A pity for UKIP - unfortunate timing (or, perhaps, deliberately timed, at the connivance of darker forces?) - but the party will certainly not feel threatened as a result - UKIP's core support is now sufficiently well established and, increasingly, the party is seen as a very serious contender in the wider world of politics. More so, methinks, than either the Green (for which read "naive") Party or the idiotic and impotent Lib Dems.

Submitted by mehvali on June 11, 2014 - 12:40pm.

Job are available only for black and white not for other community of Asians and Indians are still struggling and facing racist in employment Industry